This year's organizers offered a reinvigorated idea of what the New York Film Festival can be: elite and cerebral, topically, tonally, and globally diverse, and eager to foster a dialogue with its community.

Shafted by the current events taking place outside its theaters, the New York Film Festival was agreeably low-key this year, demonstrating that art, at its best, can serve as valuable provocation when we try to make sense of a bewildering world.

New York’s Film Forum offers an ambitious and inspired film series this summer, dedicated to the films of Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai. The series is as entertaining, provocative, and intricate as its subject.

Angela Mao is wholesome and badass, a personality that, when brought to her fight scenes, immediately marks her as a star—although the scripts she was given don't often give her the chance to maximize that stardom.